Chicago Day Two continues my Springfield/Chicago trip with Tim Karas. The first thing posts about the trip are Springfield Part One, Springfield Part Two and Chicago Day One.
Tuesday found Tim and I heading to the Chicago Botanic Gardens after having breakfast at a diner around the corner from his apartment. The gardens are beautiful, I did take a few photos of flowers but most of the flowers I saw I have already taken photos of at Brookgreen Gardens at home. I really enjoyed the Japanese Gardens and Bonsai Collection which we don’t have at home. My favorite part of the gardens is the waterfall where Tim and I spent some time doing long exposure photographer with neutral density filters. The hardest part was because it was the middle of the day and we didn’t bring our tripods with us so we were setting our cameras up on either walls (Tim) or on the wall, on top of my camera bag and filter envelope (me). The bright sunny day also made shooting the flowers fun because of the harsh sunlight. Luckily we were able to find some flowers in the shade.
We stopped for lunch and had authentic Chicago hot dogs and fries. Tim did anyway, I had them hold the onions, tomato and mustard but still had the relish and pickle. Apparently it is blasphemous to add ketchup to the hot dog. Tim was bound and determined to get me to eat something authentic Chicago (or Springfield in regards to the horseshoe) but he ran into my stubborn streak and picky eating habits. We had milkshakes for dessert.
After lunch we headed to the Ba’hai Temple to take more photos. Be careful when using the phone GPS because it took us down a road that was a dead end. Luckily the temple was nearby and we could see it so it wasn’t an issue. This is the second religious place Tim has taken me to on our trips (the first was a catholic church in DC) so I’m beginning to see a pattern but since I’m not religious, I will happily take photographs of them but that is all. I had brought my crystal ball with me on the trip and this was the first and only time we used it. Tim learned the joys of carrying it on a sunny day. Not only is it heavy but if it is held at the wrong angle to the sun, it will burn you.
While we were at dinner, my brother who lives in Milwaukee, called me to tell me that he had forgotten that I was coming to town (I was planning on staying with him on Thursday night). Because of renovations, we agreed just to have lunch on Thursday and then I would head home. More on that story on the next blog post.
We headed back to to temple to get long exposure shots and met up with Tim’s friend, Jeff. At 10pm when the Temple closed we headed back to our cars. Thinking I would see Jeff at the parking lot, I quickly headed to my car worried we were going to be locked in. We were blocked in but because the gate consisted of a barricade and two orange cones which needless to say were very easy to move but unfortunately Jeff had parked in the street so I didn’t say goodbye.
Story continues in Brookfield Zoo